


Something Different

by Twelve (Dodici)



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, I'm not late it's still October 1st somewhere in the world, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, heavens arena, missing moment, writober2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 08:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20863424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dodici/pseuds/Twelve
Summary: Behind the doors of the Testing Gate, someone accurately forgot to mention that there are in fact other career paths besides killing people.





	Something Different

**Author's Note:**

> Remember when Gon thought that two years were a lot of time even for a six-year-old Killua to get to the 200th floor of the Heavens Arena? Here’s 5k words about it because I evidently need help.  
Please watch out for mention of abuse of the Zoldyck variety.
> 
> I'm trying to improve my English skills but I still make lots of silly mistakes XD Feel free to point them out if you like!

The first time he sees the Arena, Killua thinks that buildings are that big because people like his father are the right amount of body mass. He asks Illumi if he’s going to become that big too and he receives a blank stare back – he’s not surprised.

“If you eat your vegetables,” grandpa says then, but you can never be sure if grandpa is joking. He usually is, but with just that little bit of seriousness that makes things muddy. 

Dad, however, when he talks is always muddy, like fog inside Killua’s head. He scratches at it and it prickles – it never stopped since this morning, when Illumi woke him up even earlier than during training days – every other day, then. 

“I hate vegetables,” Killua says, even if it isn’t exactly the truth. Tomatoes are vegetables, he thinks, and he likes them on a pizza, even if sometimes he gets confused and thinking about blood makes his head swing like poisonous nausea raising from the pit of his stomach. He never told Illumi, it looks a lot like something he wouldn’t like for him to think about. 

“Kill, come here.”

Dad’s voice is always firm. Not aggressive, he never really is, but Killua knows he can’t get away with disobedience when he’s around. It’s pretty fine, actually: dad is an interesting guy, Killua’s always seen him lurking around dungeons and he isn’t sure he’s ever looked at his face properly, since he’s always so higher up than the line of his vision. 

This time, he looks at him from above, curly hair falling down like a mane. 

“Your name on the paper,” he instructs, passing the pen to him.

Killua frowns, but he steps on his toes to find the paper on the front desk. There’s also the face of a dumbstruck young lady there, who’s watching them like they’ve sprouted second heads and they all had Illumi’s face. 

“Sir, I have to point out that the kid looks a little bit too… Ahn, little,” she says, to Silva. 

He blinks, or so Killua thinks. It’s difficult to assess these kinds of things when you’re always at the lowest point of observation.

“He’s pretty tall for his age,” Silva answers, polite.

“That’s even worse,” she says, smile cracking. “How old are you, sweetie?”

“I’ll be seven in July,” Killua says, and find the space in which he should put his name. Dad’s already filled the gap for the date. He doesn’t hear what the lady has to say before dad shuts her up again with his charm – so mum usually calls it – as Killua forges his signature without faltering even if the fake surname he’s using isn’t any less of a mouthful than his actual surname.

Then they give him a number with four digits and here he goes, pen still in hand because he forgot to leave it on the desk. 

The people in the line are throwing side glances to the rest of the family and Killua doesn’t really knows why, since he’s pretty sure they aren’t the weirdest of the bunch there. 

“Well, off we go then,” grandpa says, with his grandpa smile, as they scoot a bit past the entrance door. 

Killua frowns. 

“What,” he realizes, with a weird sensation of vacuum inside his throat. “You’re not staying?”

Grandpa raises a hand.

“No thanks. I’ve been here more than enough times myself. Time for the next generation to suffer through it.” 

“That already happened, dad,” says Silva. “I guess we love traditions. You’ll have to stay here by yourself, Kill, until you get to the 200th floor. Then you can come home.”

“The 200th floor?” Killua repeats and he knows it’s a number – Milluki taught him math just alright, even if it’s the most boring thing in the universe – and he knows how to count till numbers way bigger than that. Hell, he’s been paid with digits way bigger than that, even if that kind of money gets directly to the family account. Maybe that’s why it's so difficult to wrap his head around something that abstract. 

He raises his chin to look at the gleaming metal of the tower that runs up towards the sky like it’s made of something lighter than clouds. It’s the biggest building he’s ever seen ever – it’s not as tall as Kukuroo Mountain, but just as impressive from below.

“I’m not sure this is such a good idea, father,” Illumi says, eyes so serious that for a brief moment Killua is almost sure he’s worried. He should take a photo, he and Milluki still have an ongoing bet on how many actual facial expression their oldest brother can do. Right now, it’s one – and it’s _scary_.

Silva turns his head, slowly. 

“Why not, Illumi,” he says, and bows just a tiny bit to loom over him from his impressive height. “Are you doubting your abilities? If you’ve done your job properly, like you said you did, Kill is going to be perfectly safe, am I right?” He taps on his forehead with an index and they exchange a weird kind of glance. Killua doesn’t question it much: dad and Illumi always have some business thing or training thing to talk about and Killua's name appears in their conversation so often that he doesn’t even think they’re actually talking about him as him. More like some footnote business organizational thingy. Boring as hell.

Grandpa Zeno shoots him a wink and Killua puffs his cheeks.

“I don’t know what y’all are talking about, but I’m going to kill everybody in less than a week, so don't worry.”

Illumi makes a face, an actual one. Frozen on the spot, answer cut in half as Silva raises both his eyebrows and _snorts_.

“Oh, sure, my bad,” he says, and actually crouches on his legs to talk to Killua from his height. “I forgot to tell you there were rules. You can’t kill anybody here, son.”

Killua looks at him dead in the eyes. Then he blinks, words starting to ring some sense into his brain.

“What?”

Zeno is laughing aloud, now. Illumi’s lips have vanished from his face.

“What do you mean I can’t kill people. We’re assassins. You’re always telling me that we’re…”

“I know, I know. But this is another kind of training, alright?” Silva insists, and you simply can’t disagree with him. He’s the one who makes all the rules, the ones which even Illumi abides by.

Silva smiles again and pats him on the head in a way that's almost fond, before raising up.

“Well then, we’re off. Do your best, Kill.”

“Be careful,” Illumi says, and looks at him intently for a moment like leaving him there makes him sad for real. 

Killua looks at them and then the open gates of the Arena and what he’s supposed to do, really?

“But what am I going to do if I can’t kill people?” he asks, and who cares if those same people turn around to look at him with puzzled expressions. 

A hand, smaller than Silva’s and way more wrinkled, plops itself on his shoulder. 

“Listen kid, you opened the Testing Gate, right?” Zeno says, pensive. Killua rolls his eyes because that’s a rhetorical question.

“Yes grandpa.”

He nods, satisfaction pouring from him like he’s smiling.

“Well so, when in doubt, just push.”

Killua blinks at his outstretched palm.

“Push?”

“Push,” he repeats, grinning.

“Dad, stop giving him advices! He’s gotta figure things out for himself. Bye Kill, work hard.”

“Stay safe,” Illumi adds once again with uncharacteristic intensity.

“Have fun! But not too much fun,” Zeno corrects himself, as Silva is already sighing. 

And then they’re gone, leaving him there with his paper and a number and nothing else. 

“When in doubt, just push,” Killua repeats, before he has to choose between moving and letting the crowd crush him. 

*

He starts by pushing people and they send him to the 50th floor that very day. They give him a room all for himself and this thing suddenly looks way less dumb than Killua thought at first.

“I have a room for myself!” he tells Gotoh that same evening, on the phone. Gotoh hums, patient.

“You have a room for yourself here too, master Killua.”

“Yes, but this one doesn’t have weird traps and it’s super high, like, really high. And there’s this thing called room service…”

“I can always bring you whatever you like even here, master Killua,” Gotoh says and Killua sighs.

“You don’t get it. Anyway, I’m fine, I think I’m going to beat this thing before the end of the week, stay tuned!”

“I will, ehm, stay tuned with much pleasure, master Killua. Please call again if you need anything at all.”

Killua thanks him and hangs up.

“He really doesn’t get it,” he mumbles to the white, clear ceiling, while he bounces lazily on the mattress. The window overlooks on creamy clouds and a cerulean sky. Everything smells of fresh and clean, so much that Killua suddenly feels pretty filthy. 

He sniffs at his armpit and tries to assess the situation. 

“Oh wow, I should have a bath. I’m such a responsible adult,” he decides, giggling. And then he spends three hours orchestrating a gruesome battleship against the rubber duck using every single soap bar and shampoo bottle he can find. 

*

They also give him money, every time he knocks somebody out. This, Killua doesn’t tell Gotoh at home. Sure everybody knew that already, that’s why they left him there without backup. 

He still isn’t really sure they did it for real, but at this point he can usually tell when Illumi is tailing him, because his eyes prickles on the nape of his neck like the bite from an insect. 

It doesn’t feel like it’s the case, even if during a fight he’s almost sure he’s seen Illumi’s face in between the bystanders – most likely Killua is just paranoid.

His opponent takes advantage of his distraction and throws him out of the ring. Killua feels pretty ashamed after – it’s his first defeat since he put feet in the Arena. 

It won’t be the last: he usually kicks everybody without even try, but then sometimes some weird character appears and he just feels – no, he _knows_ he can’t beat them. Like Illumi is inside his head telling him that he should run for dear life.

“You’re a really smart kid,” says the scary woman wrapped in a dress that looks like one giant, colorful scarf. Killua gave up after doing nothing more than watching her move a step toward him – that split second is all he needs to understand that it would have been like trying to fight Illumi or, worse, his father.

So that’s how Killua finds out that the world is vast and full of powerful people. His forehead itches like mad and he starts to think that maybe he’s got an allergy to all those shampoo inside his room or that maybe it is something like being watched by Illumi even when Illumi isn’t there. It doesn’t really bother him – it’s not like he could do anything about it anyway. 

He rings at home to tell Gotoh that he’s going to be a bit late, because there are some crazy people around. 

“Please, try to be safe master Killua, that’s all I ask,” he says, and Killua can hear him frowning from there.

“I’ll be fine. Would you like it if I brought you something? Like a souvenir?”

“That’s absolutely not necessary and not my place to ask, master, but I guess I couldn’t stop you.”

“You’re super boring, you know that?” Killua says, and sighs. “Maybe I’ll get something for Canary, then. Bye!”

He goes down to the city, that’s swarming with people who look definitely shady. That’s exactly the kind of people Killua is more at ease with, so he doesn’t mind running around to avoid gambling places and search for some more interesting shops instead. 

He realizes that he doesn’t know what Canary likes when he’s already in front of a toy store. 

Maybe he should get her a dinosaur: everyone loves dinosaurs, they’re super cool. He tilts his head and finds himself contemplating stuffed toys instead. There’s a bear that looks really fluffy, which is a stupid thing, but hypnotizes him on the spot because he’s sure that someone back at home would for sure like it, but it isn’t Canary and sure as hell isn’t Milluki. Maybe it’s Kalluto, he decides, scratching at his itching forehead: it must be him, because there’s no one else he would like to bring souvenirs back for, isn’t it? The stuffed bear looks at him with big, black, hollow eyes and Killua feels like he’s definitely forgetting something important. 

He leaves the shop with a dinosaur for Canary and a starter kit for making origami figures. It’s way better than a stuffed toy, maybe he and Kalluto could make some cool airplanes when they don’t have to train sometimes. They usually have, though, and it’s when he’s already back at the Arena that Killua realizes he hasn’t trained for five whole days now. It’s the longest stretch since he was… He really can’t remember.

*

The reason why he can’t remember the last time he got without training at least a bit every day is because it never happened. Not when he got the measles and, now that he thinks about it, he’s pretty sure that, every single time he wasn’t feeling well enough to train it was because of training to begin with. Which is super silly. 

He can’t remember if he ever got a fever that wasn’t poison induced or if he ever had a headache that wasn’t from Illumi trying out some headlock. 

His first memory is actually of learning how to dislodge every bone in his hands until he got them to look like claws. Now it doesn’t hurt anymore, there’s just that sinister crackling sound, like a jenga tower falling down. 

That, too, is pretty silly. 

“So you are six and your family left you here to fight all alone.”

“It’s training,” Killua says, around a mouthful of cookie. 

The woman in the scarf has invited him out for a tea, because weird people are weird. She's called Ambarra and she’s from the Azian continent. She came all the way from there to ‘have a look’ at the Arena. 

“Training, right,” she repeats and nods in a pretty serious tone. She’s pretty serious overall, but not as scary as Killua thought at first. Her skin is darker than Canary’s and her teeth pearly white when she smiles over the rim of her cup. “And are you having fun training here, Killua?”

Killua stops in his tracks, cookie crumbles falling on the table. He frowns, thinking hard about it. 

“I guess. I mean, I think I am,” he answers. “It’s funnier than back at home, at least.”

Ambarra is still studying him. She said she finds him interesting and got him some cookies with that tea, like the textbook dangerous adult from every scary story about kidnapping. Killua feels fully equipped to deal with a kidnapping, though, and he wasn’t going to decline the offer of free cookies; and a chat, too, because sometimes it does get a bit lonely here. There’s no one his age to talk to and adults tend to dismiss him or fear him depending on if they’ve also already seen him fight. 

“And what are you training for exactly, Killua?” Ambarra asks, while she pours a cup of tea for him too, even if Killua isn’t sure he’d like drinking something that smells so heavily of freshly cut grass. 

“You won’t believe me. I told it to the lady at the reception and she laughed at me.”

“I promise I won’t laugh.”

“That’s dumb, laughing is really difficult to control, it’s like sneezing.”

And in fact she does laugh a bit; discretely, though, dark eyes sparkling. Killua snorts.

“I’m an assassin.”

Ambarra's hands stop, cup raised mid air, but she doesn’t change expression.

“That sounds about right,” she says, before sipping. “Are the people back at home assassins too?”

Killua doesn’t really know what to think of her. He nods.

“Whole family is in the business. They say I’m really good at it but I still have to train a lot,” he adds, nervous. For some unfathomable reason, the opinion of this stranger seems to mean something for his stomach. 

She’s still looking intently at him, but in a different way than Illumi. A better way, he thinks, like she’s trying to figure him out without dissecting his thought as if she needed to dispose of them like corpses. 

“And what do you think, do you like it? Training to be an assassin, I mean,” she asks, with the same polite curiosity as before, like they’re talking about tea brands.

Killua knows that the cookie crunched under his teeth, he heard the sound, but he can’t feel any taste. He lets his legs swing from the too-high stool of the cafè and thinks hard. 

Does he like it? He doesn’t dislike it even: it’s something he does, like waking up and eating breakfast and training until Illumi decides it’s time to go to sleep – rinse and repeat. 

He doesn’t dislike it but he doesn’t like it even. It’s just how things are. How things are going to be, that’s what dad said, what mom praises him for – being obedient and become a good assassin. 

“I don’t know, I guess it’s okay,” he says then, but the answer sounds off to his own ears. “I’ve never really thought about it. I… I’m good at assassination but not much else. Maybe video games,” he adds, as an afterthought, and for some reason this makes Ambarra smile. 

“It’s not a job, though. Video games,” Killua remarks, because he’s starting to feel really pretty dumb.

Ambarra shakes her head, her mass of braids flowing around. They frame her face nicely, make her look elegant in a completely different way than mom’s frilly clothes.

“Well, everything can be a job if you’re enough passionate about it. I made a job out of tea.”

“Tea,” Killua repeats. Maybe she’s batshit crazy – at least she can’t have poisoned him with tea and cookies, since he’s immune. 

“Yes, tea. Spices, to be more precise. I’m a gourmet hunter, I hunt for flavors,” she says, completely serious. Killua blinks twice, but she’s now talking about her trips all around the world searching for weird seasoning like it’s the most wonderful thing ever. “And I obviously like a good fight, too. When I heard about this place I came immediately, but I guess I’ll find more of a challenge over the 200th floor.”

Killua looks at her, trying to understand why everyone’s talking about that 200th floor like there’s some mystery to it, but Ambarra is humming to herself while playing gingerly with her cup of tea. 

“What exactly is a hunter?” Killua asks then, elbows fixed on the table. 

“Oh, just the best job one could hope to land,” Ambarra says, eyes sparkling. “With a hunter license you’re free to go wherever you want whenever you want, you can live the most incredible adventures and meet the most incredible people. It’s everyone's dream job.”

“But you talked about teas,” Killua says, in a snort. “It sounds dumb, searching for teas around the world.”

The only reaction in Amabarra’s face is a slight bending of eyebrows. 

“Well, young man, your life must be pretty incredible if traveling all over the world pursuing your true passion sounds ‘dumb’ to you.”

“I travel a lot too,” he says and he doesn’t know why he feels compelled to clutch at the table and raise his voice, like he has something to demonstrate to this woman. “I’ve killed a lot of people from different countries. Politicians and the like, so I know-”

“And did you have fun? I always have lots of fun. Life is meaningless without fun… But you don’t have to worry right now. You’ll have plenty of time to figure out what is that you really want, it will come to you eventually if you keep your eyes open. Are you having fun right now?” she then asks, and it's definitely a trick question.

Killua’s mouth was ready with a retort, but he ends up gaping instead. Ambarra smiles again, larger.

“If that’s so, try and get the best out of it. I have to go now,” she says. “I have to win a match for real, since you wisely chose to forfeit. We’ll see each other eventually, if you decide to stick around to get to the 200th floor.”

She gets up and she’s already asking for the bill, braids flowing on her back like shiny algae. 

“I…” Killua starts, stumbling like a dumbass while he climbs down the stool. 

“Yes?” she asks, bending over him. She’s way less intimidating than dad, and definitely less than Tsubone. 

“Thanks for the cookies?” Killua says, dumbstruck.

“You’re very welcome, Killua,” she says, and flail a hand at him right before walking away. 

*

“It’s been months, master Killua.” Gotoh’s voice is strained. Killua sighs and lets the dinosaur fall down on the mattress with him. Canary wouldn’t have liked it anyway. 

“Well, it’s not like you wouldn’t have known if I was dead. My corpse would have been returned to you, they have a policy about that.” He can hear Gotoh’s face scrunch up over the phone. 

“Please, don’t talk about your corpse not even as a joke,” he says, voice strained. “Are you okay? Why on earth is it taking so long, master Silva said…”

“Well, I’m here to train, so I’m training,” Killua says, to the sun shining brightly over the window. “I’m training really thoroughly, you know? I thought that’s what everybody wanted.”

He takes the dinosaur again and lets him flow in front of him.

“I know for a fact that your mother would prefer having you back at home at once, master Killua,” Gotoh says, and Killua knows that she must have deafened him with her shrieks. “I’m sure you’ll do anything in your power to put her mind at ease and come back home as fast as you can.”

The dinosaur makes a pitiful roar when you press the little button under his belly. 

“Gotoh, what’s a hunter?” he asks, pondering. He feels like he couldn’t think about anything else in these last weeks. He hasn’t seen Ambarra anymore, but he’s now made a game of telling them apart, hunters from normal people: there’s a different feeling about them, something feral, like you're dealing with another species. 

“A hunter? What do you mean, master, a hunter is… oh,” he stops abruptly. “You mean Hunters with a capital.”

“Yes,” Killua says, even if he didn’t know the capital was needed in the first place. “What are they? I mean, how does one become a Hunter? I was told that there’s an exam, but it sounds pretty mysterious and everybody seems almost scared of it and…”

“Everybody _who_, master Killua?” Gotoh asks, and he doesn’t exactly sound angry – way more _scared_. “Master Silva wouldn’t like for you to waste time like this. I won’t report what you told me to him, but I seriously advise that you’ll stay focused on your task from now on, are we on the same page?”

“I… yeah, sure,” Killua says, to the red gleaming eyes of the roaring dinosaur. “I won’t bring it up again. I was just curious, you’re super boring, you know it, right? Say hi to Canary,” he adds, in haste before hanging up. 

For quite an entire minute he doesn’t understand what that loud, pumping sound that’s filling the room is, until he recognizes it as his own heartbeat. 

They don’t get it. Gotoh, and everybody else, they don’t get it – Killua is alone in this thing, he’s the one who’s in the wrong. He must be, since everybody else is so sure that this is the right thing for him, be an assassin.

Still, he can’t forget Ambarra’s smile, the mischievous, enthusiastic twinkle in her eyes while she was talking about teas out of all things – and traveling and seeing the world and _having fun_. 

*

He’s delayed every possible delay. He’s forfeited and lost on purpose. He’s tried every restaurant in the city, spent a fortune in sweets, bought half a dozen roaring plastic dinosaurs and staged war movies with the shampoos and rubber ducks in every bathroom of every room they assigned to him. 

It’s been almost two years since the last time he trained the way he used to train at home, but he doesn’t feel weaker. He feels better – stronger and more confident as he knocks out his last contestant with an uppercut.

“You can now go up to the 200th floor,” the girl at the reception says, face blank as she explains some kind of procedure. Killua isn’t listening, he had already packed his stuff – he decided to leave the dinosaurs behind, but he took the origami kit with him. He’s still sure he forgot something, something that was waiting for him back at home – something that’s the real reason why he should go back, instead of… nothing. He shouldn’t even dare to think about it. 

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he says, to the receptionist that’s still trying to give him some kind of form to fill. “I have to go back home now.”

“Oh,” she says, blinking. “Well. If you ever decide to come back again, mister, it’s my pleasure to inform you that you could then start directly from the 200th floor.”

“Cool,” Killua says, backpack on. “Have a nice day.”

He steps out and it’s still really big, the Arena, even if Killua has grown up at least five centimeters since the first time he put foot there. The 200th floor looks as far as it was back then and, worse, everything looks just as far, while Kukuroo mountain grows bigger and bigger with every meter he covers on foot and on airships and on the bus. 

He opens the Testing Gate up to the second door, but when the shutters close behind him it’s like he’s been falling all along just to land there, again on those ground under the looming shadow of docile, dumb Mike, with his dead eyes and his insatiable appetite – no negotiations, nothing but the job.

“Welcome back, master Killua!” 

Canary sounds genuinely happy and Killua is almost tempted to talk to her for real.

“How did training go?” she asks, polite and – that’s her job too. Everybody, from good old Zebro to Mike, Gotoh and Canary and every single one of Killua’s siblings – that’s a weird thought, why siblings? Aren’t there only brothers? – are there to get the job done and that’s all there is to it. There will never be anything different ever.

“Pretty good, thanks. Yours?”

“Gotoh promoted me. I’m officially a butler now,” says Canary, smiling like that’s what she always wanted, and maybe it is. Maybe Killua really is the only one who doesn’t have it – something that he wants for real, something like a true _passion_ or whatever one should call it. 

And that’s okay, he is the weird one: he can deal with it, go back to training and killing and get the job done. 

He has already forgotten Ambarra’s name and everything else but the vague feeling of something desperately missing, but something did stick inside him – something is still there and it’s going to grow and become unbearable until the house and Kukuroo mountain and the entire darn Republic of Padokia will fill his head and his lungs with dark, suffocating smoke, pulling him under worse than Illumi trying to drown him, worse than anything that he’s ever suffered through. And when he will snaps – and he will – the only thing that would make sense will be that word, Hunter with a capital, and the promise of something else, different, maybe even something fun.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m killing myself over Writober2019. This fic fills the prompt #missing moment from the pumpFic list by[ Fanwriter.it.](https://twitter.com/fanwriterit)


End file.
